HP has recently introduced a new range of printers and a new line of ink cartridges to match. The HP Ink Advantage series claims to offer customers twice the amount of prints at the same cost of previous print cartridges without compromising on the high quality expected from HP’s genuine products. According to HP, users can expect to print 1500 pages or 3 reams of paper from the Black cartridge and 750 pages or 1.5 reams of paper from the Tri-colour cartridge, which according to HP is double the page yield of its closest competitor’s cartridges.

HP has launched the HP Ink Advantage series in the Middle East, Africa and Europe and hopes that the increased amount of prints for the same costs per cartridge will go some way to combatting the huge rise in counterfeit HP printer cartridges around the world. User will be less likely to be tempted to buy from unofficial suppliers which is how the majority of counterfeited products enters the global supply stream.

It’s not just more prints for your money either, this new range of HP printers offers faster printing speeds as well as the ability to print wirelessly and remotely using HP’s E-Print technology.

To assist in raising the global profile of its new HP Advantage range of cartridges and printers and the increased value they offer, HP challenged Chinese artist Hong Yi, to be creative, innovative and express herself using only a HP printer, one ink cartridge from the HP Ink Advantage series and 1500 pieces of A4 paper. Hong Yi or Red, as she is commonly known, readily accepted the challenge.

Red is a self-confessed mixed media artist, literally anything can be utilised as tools or building blocks for her art work. Red’s previous work has included the use of candle wax, tea bags, sunflower seeds, coffee stains and even a painted basket-ball to create a portraits so HP were excited to see what Red would produce using a printer, a cartridge and two reams of everyday A4 paper and the result was simply an amazing piece of creative artistic expression.

Red came up with a staggering portrait called The Soaring Bird (above)which was created by simply scanning feathers on a HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 2520hc all-in-one printer and printing them out, all 1500 pages with just one printer cartridge.

As with all good ideas, it starts with a plan, Red creates a picture board so she can plan her final image, with 1500 sheets to be printed, it takes up a large space laying out the individual printed pieces.

Its amazing what can be achieved using a few every day items and a big idea, without the creative flair of the artist the printer is just a mundane machine, its the artistic view that gives the humble printer a new purpose from printing photo’s or office documents.

Sheet by sheet the scanned and printed images of feathers are pain painstakingly put together to create the final image.

HP were quick to add that the whole process was completed without any paper jams or clogged print heads. To see more of Hong Yi’s work visit her website: redhongyi.com